RogerBW's Blog

Outcrossing, Celia Lake 17 September 2022

2018 romantic fantasy, first of its loose series. In a slightly sideways magical 1922, Rufus tries to find work and keep up his cottage in the New Forest, but everyone despises him as one of the few to have come back unharmed from the War. Feronia, of rather better family but having taken work as a governess to escape from an arranged marriage, is one of the people who might take him seriously…

There are parts of this that are clearly intended to appeal to category romance fans: for example, we're told up front that each story in the series (six in this sub-series, fifteen or more all told in this world) is a stand-alone romance with a happy ending. Others are odder: chapters are always short, to the extent that some scenes stretch over multiple chapters. If these books are getting edited at all, it's very light; there were frequent infelicities of phrasing which threw me out of immersion to try to work out what had actually been said, and the dialogue in particular sometimes feels as though it had been written by a non-native speaker of English.

As a romance, this story is very straightforward (with explicit sex): hero and heroine meet, they fall nearly instantly in love, and they try to work out whether and how they can make a life together, with a smuggling gang intervening. But that's not why I read it; rather, I'm interested in the world, the parallel magical England alongside the historical one (but non-magical people just don't happen to go down these particular roads). Of course this could be an excuse to skimp on the research, but we get slightly sideways versions of real trauma, survivor's guilt, class prejudice (Lake is one of the few American writers I've read who can make the English version of this sound authentic), and indeed New Forest tradition… it's quite light fantasy, with people living recognisable historical lives, but there's the feeling of a real secondary world out there.

All right, there's also a deus-ex-machina nobleman who sets everything to rights once he hears about it. But even he doesn't have all the answers.

This is an odd sort of book, and I shall read more.

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

Series: Mysterious Charm | Next in series: Goblin Fruit

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech aviation base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2022 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1